Standards

Products and services

Welcome to our Information For Authors hub. In these pages we’ve gathered together all the information and advice you’ll need as an author, editor or contributor from the start of the process – submitting a proposal – through to publication and beyond.

Successful IET Communities

What makes a successful IET Community? There is no definitive answer to this question but we want to provide our volunteers with some ideas to help you create the community you want and that fulfils the IET’s objectives.

What are your network’s objectives?

Success will depend on the objectives for your community. Hopefully you will have had a chance to think about this in your annual planning review. Some ideas are:

Engaging with more students and Young Professionals

Inspiring school children

Helping to disseminate technical content

Growing your volunteering pool

Building your online community

Engaging with industry

Enabling networking and professional development

Engaging with more students and Young Professionals

If this is what you would like to achieve there are a number of different options open to your network.

On Campus: IET On Campus is the IET’s comprehensive approach to working with universities across the world. The initiative is primarily run by students, with support from IET staff, Local Network volunteers and a member of their university staff. To find out more about this initiative and how Local Networks can leverage it to engage with students please read this briefing.

You can also watch this film presented by the Head of Communities and Events, Alex Taylor, who talks you through On Campus and what it means for Local Networks.

Local Networks in the UK can also create stronger links with universities by connecting with the IET Diamond Jubilee Scholars. Read our case study on what this means and how you can utilise them more effectively.

Present Around The World: Present Around The World is a global competition for Young Professionals and Students within engineering to develop and showcase their presentation skills. Local Networks that wish to engage more with young professionals should look to hold a competition. The IET can provide you with lots of event management and marketing resources. To find out more please go to the Present Around The World website.

Sponsoring a prize: Where universities or colleges do not have IET accredited programmes Local Networks can offer an IET Local Network Prize to reward excellence in students. The prize winner should be nominated on the official form (please request this from your staff support) by the academic establishment on the basis of having achieved excellence on a course that falls within the IET’s scope of interest. No restriction regarding age, sex or nationality should be made. The value of the award must be £250 or an amount with an equivalent purchasing power in other countries. Only one award should be offered per establishment even where there are a number of different departments specialising in different areas of engineering and technology.

John Lawrence, Chairman of the South Yorkshire Local Network, has put together the following case study which highlights how they have been using the Student of Excellence Award as a way of improving their relationships with universities and employers in their local area.

Inspiring school children

All IET Local Networks can have a Schools Liason Officer that can receive bespoke support and resources from the IET’s 5-19 Team. In March 2016 the IET Robot Triathlon was held at the Silk Mill in Derby. The activity was for individual robot enthusiasts, school STEM clubs, or groups of like-minded undergraduates to design a robot to compete in 3 challenges. This event was initiated by the IET Birmingham Network and the IET Schools Liaison Officer for Derbyshire, Stephen Powley. It’s a great example of volunteers from different areas of the business coming together to achieve a common goal: to inspire the next generation of engineers. Please watch this video to see the event in action and to hear from the volunteers about why they got involved.

If you do not have a Schools Liason Officer please contact the 5-19 Team ieteducation@theiet.org and they will do all they can to help. Currently Schools Liaison's Officers are available in the UK only.

Helping to disseminate technical content

The IET supports a number of Technical Networks and we encourage collaboration between them and Local Networks. One possibility could be holding a technical event within a specific geographic area that is jointly organised between the Local and Technical Network. An example is when the Aerospace TPN and Singapore LN worked together on an event in 2015.

Growing your volunteering pool

Having a pool of willing and active volunteers to help out with activities can be one of the most important challenges for Local Networks. The networks that have a more formal succession planning system tend to be those with the least issues. Read our volunteer briefing on succession planning.

Advertise for volunteers at your event: The Surrey Local Network have produced a small advert and form calling for more volunteers that they leave on the seats at their events. Tim Brown who created the idea told us “We find it is better to do advertise for new volunteers at events where there is more mix of age of attendance. Therefore more big mainstream events that get a Young Professionals audience are better to target for us”. The Communities Team have re-created Surrey LN’s volunteer forms in Word Format so please feel free to edit them for your network, print them out and use at your events.

Run a volunteer workshop: Mersey and Western Cheshire Network run a bi-annual volunteer workshop which gets everyone together, reviews the previous session, takes ideas to bring the network forward, has guest speakers and talks KPI’s. This year (2016) will be the second time this network has run the workshop and they have found it very valuable.

Building an online community

The IET hosts the Engineering Communities platform. This is a place where Local Networks can build and nurture your own online community. All Community Administrators are invited to join the Community Administrators Group on the platform that has a wealth of guidance on how to build an online engineering community.

Engaging with industry

The IET Regional Development Managers can work with Local Networks in the UK in the following ways:

Promoting and supporting professional development

Supporting individuals who want to achieve professional registration

Engaging non-Members

PRA/PRI volunteering opportunities.

Should you identify an organisation where you believe the IET should be offering support please speak to your Community Manager.

Enabling networking and professional development events

You could be offering professional development opportunities for local engineers and students. Examples include Fresher’s and Graduation events in universities and colleges, Lifeskills workshops, membership recruitment events and Professional Registration events. You can find out more about running successful events like Lifeskills in our Running successful events section.

Other great ideas initiated by Local Networks

Welcoming new members: Ensuring that new members of your local network feel welcome is a great way of engaging with them from the start. Birmingham Local Network invites their new members to Austin Court for a few nibbles and a chat. Nothing too fancy but it’s a great introduction and an opportunity to network.

Asking for event suggestions/feedback: This one could be really beneficial but is often overlooked. Asking your delegates to fill out feedback forms following an event could provide you with some great tips to use at future events. Asking for event suggestions can also give a good insight into what your members would like to see more of.

Annual team building: IET Malaysia YPS organised an Annual Team Building event and invited not just the Young Professionals (YPs) committee members but also the On Campus groups’ committee members. The purpose was to get to know each other, build stronger team and to coordinate future events. During the event, a mini forum sharing session was conducted for YPs to share experience being an engineer, what skills needed before the students step into a working world.